


I knew him.

by TheWinterBallerina (Nobodybitesherlip)



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Blood, Brainwashing, Gen, One Shot, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 12:48:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1429144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nobodybitesherlip/pseuds/TheWinterBallerina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What am I without memory? I am blood and flesh and metal. Isn't that enough?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	I knew him.

**Author's Note:**

> Please listen to Captain America- The Winter Soldier Soundtrack, track 8, "Alexander Pierce," or "End of the Line." You know, the sad ones.

Poets and artists have played with the idea of memory for as long, and I'm sorry, for as long as anyone can remember. I apologise for drawing out long lines from everything that's gone before. No, even that is steeped in irony. What is history, continuity, without memory?

What am I without memory?

I am blood and flesh and metal. Isn't that enough?

-

It rains in New York and all over the world, at some point or other. The rain flecks my lenses with tiny needle points of refracted light which distract my eyes from the world beyond the lense. 

I hate glasses and goggles, but they shield my eyes from eyes, as well as rain and flecks of blood. 

Have you ever seen red, so that your eyes are cloudy with it? So that your blinking only distorts the swirls and whorls of someone else's iron tanged life? You can rub it away with a fist, I know, but then involuntarily you cry red tears that dry to a dirt brown on your cheeks. Lines to remind you, memory, of what you saw through the whorls. 

Lines to say you lived, and someone else died. 

But, that's memory, and that's something I'm not permitted to carry with me. It weighs too heavy and slows the iron fist of justice. (Justice involves memory though, does it not? How can you avenge someone you don't remember? How can you change something when you don't know what went before?) 

These are not the questions a robot should ask, so he does not, but something slips the buzzing of his brain before he can help it.

"That-"

Do poets write about muscle memory? I don't know. I barely know what an artist is, let alone what they do. 

The blank slate of a wiped mind, trembling free with the fog of pain lifting to- to what? Peace, and space. Space to be filled until the the contained thoughts vibrate too hard against each other and something slips out. 

"That man-"

I am blood and flesh and metal. That is enough. 

I have legs that can carry me and arms that obey me. This is all I have that I am in command of, really, but why should I begrudge it? There are those who have less. 

I do not want more. 

There is something so neat and efficient when you curl your fingers without having told them to do it, but they knew what you wanted anyway. I think this is what I need to be as well. A hand that knows what needs to move, with as little delay as possible. Yet,

"That man on the bridge-"

The whir of joints and things I don't understand is comforting. I don't know how either of my arms works and I don't need to. 

Everything requires regular maintenance. I am no different. 

The rain, now it increases, won't matter to the pink skin of my right or the steel of my left. I am impermeable and well oiled, well fed. My eyes are for seeing not looking, and I hear and do not listen. I breaks necks and puncture with bullets, but I do not kill. 

I do not know the transitive nature of such a thing. I do not have a before or after only a now but I can't keep this back,

"That man on the bridge, who was he?"

I open my mouth willingly for oblivion.


End file.
